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NOVEMBER 2015 PAGE 32
THE FLYING COLUMN
METRO The largest single project in the
Aviation with Gerry O’Hare
Irish government Capital Plan will be a new metro to the airport: the National Transport Authority has recommended that the LUAS with some underground segments address the transport needs of the Swords/ Airport/ City-Centre Corridor. It is planned that Metro North will be in operation by 2026/2027. Travel demand is forecast to grow by up to 40pc by 2033.
AIRPORT A Portmarnock councillor
succeeded in removing specific mention of the second runway at Dublin Airport from the Strategic Policy section of the emerging new draft Fingal County Development Plan
TRANSAERO is on the brink as a
deal to allow Russian flag carrier Aeroflot buy a 75 per cent controlling stake in Transaero for one rouble fell through.
CAPA Alan Joyce told the CAPA 2015
World Aviation Summit in Helsinki that Qantas now flies 1.6m passengers a year to Europe as against 400,000 before the alliance with Emirates. He said airlines are “some of the most trusted brands in the world.” Ryanair CCO David O'Brien claimed that legacy carriers "persist with a delusion that disruption can be regulated away.” Ian Heywood of Travelport said "airline models in the next 20 years will be significantly different than they are today,"
RUSSIA is restricting its airspace to
Ukraine starting on October 25 in response to Kiev banning flights by Russian airlines to the country. On September 16, Ukraine imposed sanctions against 25 Russian airlines.
APOLLO Aviation Group raised $833m
to acquire aircraft, engines and components for lease.
FINNAIR opened two Asian destinations, Fukuoka in Japan and Guangzhou in China, for summer 2016. Finnair will provide free WiFi to premium passengers on its A380 XWB. Helsinki is offering the lowest transfer passenger charges of major European airports to boost connectivity
LITHIUM The US is to back a ban on
AWAS Pre-tax profits at AWAS increased by 158pc to €221.9m in 2014.
lithium battery shipments on passenger planes.
FLYBE confirmed a new partnership with
EMIRATES is to add a third daily Munich service on February 1. regional and city airports.
BA The first signs emerged that BA has outgrown Heathrow T5 as it moved eight longhaul flights to Terminal 3, Accra, Cape Town, Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, Nairobi, Phoenix and Vancouver. SWISS is to bring Bombardier CS100 to LCY replacing its fleet of Avro RJ100s with CS100s over the next two years, with the first aircraft coming to London City in 2016.
VIRGIN's Little Red experiment ended when the final flights between London
Easy on the eye: Ryanair’s new interiors
The yellow rebels Ryanair ditches fast food yellow for elegant grey
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yanair’s new interiors will launch in December with what its key executives call a “less yellow” look. “We are redesigning our aircraft,” Michael O’Leary says, “We have an airy new interior.” “We are getting rid of the garish yellow which I was very proud of, we copied from McDonalds some 25 ago, as a way of keeping you awake so we would keep you spending on board.” O’Leary also said that if he had known the colour was Chelsea blue he would have gotten rid of it long ago and replaced it with Man City blue. “You are going to see a very different customer experience,” Kenny Jacobs said. The airline is “going from a lot of yellow to a little less yellow and a little more blue.” Jacobs says Ryanair will also be retro fitting the existing non-max aircraft “with the less yellow look with different bulkheads at the front and the back of the aircraft and the amount for yellow on the hatpins will also be reduced.”
“We have big ambitious. We are a very ambitious and relentless business. We want to become the number one platform in Europe. Forward bookings, load factors, traffic, we are happy where the business is at the moment.” The interiors will come with new lightweight seats which will cut fuel bills. But the airline will not compromise on legroom. “The seats were upright so that you would stay awake and shop,” O’Leary says. “Now the seats will be angled backwards. We will have airy new interiors, elegant greys, light blues.” “Because it is lightweight you will have more distance sitting as a customer sitting in those seats,” Jacobs says. “Those seats coupled with the new Boeing Sky interiors allow us to create a different flying environment for our customers with more legroom and we are excited about that.” Ryanair currently has a 30 to 32 inch seat pitch, and has avoided the temptation to reduce seat pitch to get more seats on its aircraft. “We are also launching new menus
with a more European style choice of food. There will also be healthier choices available.” The traffic forecast for 2015 has been upgraded to 103m and 380 aircraft are on order, on 1600 routes. We want to grow everywhere. One place we will call out is Germany. We have a 5pc market share and we have it in our plans to grow to 15pc to 20pc market share of Europe’s biggest market. It has he biggest population, but more interesting from our point of view it has the lowest penetration of low cost aviation. That is something we want to change. We are adding a lot of capacity. We have big growth plans in Germany. “Last April we launched a very different website for Ryanair that made it possible for your to book a flight in five clicks and we have launched our first mobile app.” “The website we launched at the start of October will be the best airline across Europe. And every single month the Ryanair app gets updated with new features.”
DMAN SYSTEM COMES TO DUBLIN
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aab defence and security has been selected by the Irish Aviation Authority to deploy Saab’s Aerobahn Departure Manager (DMAN) to improve operational efficiency at Dublin International Airport.
“Saab’s DMAN will be an essential part of the Airport Collaborative Decision Making program being implemented at Dublin airport, resulting in increased ATFM-Slotadherence, decreased taxitimes, lower environmental
impact, better runway throughput and increased collaboration” The DMAN system will provide an optimized pre departure sequence and deliver associated Target Startup Approval Times and Target Take Off Times
directly to Saab’s Electronic Flight Strip system. The system will also provide variable taxi time calculations and collaborative pre-departure sequencing in accordance with EU Commission regulation no 716/2014.